Trump threatens martial law in Minnesota -- taking a page out of his own playbook

If it can happen in Minneapolis, it can happen anywhere

Courtesy The Boston Globe

So, how do you overthrow a democracy?

We have two examples to consider, one in our past, one in the headlines this morning.

Exhibit A, as you might expect, were the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when lame-duck President Donald Trump exhorted a mob of supporters in Washington, D.C., to march on the nation’s Capitol and “fight like hell” to disrupt the formal counting of election ballots.

This after futilely pleading with election officials around the country to throw out their results and recount them in his favor (“What I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump famously begged Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger). After losing dozens of court cases in which he absurdly argued the election was stolen. After urging Vice President Mike Pence to violate his oath of office and throw out the Electoral College vote. After trying to seat a gaggle of fake electors to disrupt the counting.

And the only reason he’s not in prison right now, according to the special counsel who investigated all this, is because the American public, in its wisdom, chose to re-elect him in 2024.

Exhibit B starts with Trump saying he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for day one.” Thing about being a dictator, like crack, once you get a taste it’s hard not to keep using.

So, the playbook has always been open for inspection:

1. Claim the nation is in crisis and needs to be saved (Make America Great Again) and that what is needed is for an anointed one, a messiah, to arise.

2. Volunteer for the job saying, “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

3. Create chaos around the country to validate the initial assertion that a messiah is needed (flooding cities with ICE agents who shoot women in the face works for this).

4. Declare martial law, disband Congress, and like Julius Caesar, declare yourself dictator for life.

Step 4 seemed ominously close this morning with this headline in The Washington Post:

Back to that dictator for life thing: When democracies fall, they are hard to put back together again. Rome was never a representative republic after Caesar.

Which is, of course, why the Founders of this country created guardrails against just this sort of thing, why they divided power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

And it’s the job of the legislative branch—the very body Trump’s mob stormed—to keep chief executives in check.

If our democracy falls, it will not just be because of Trump’s dictatorial impulses. Narcissists and egomaniacs are a dime a dozen. It will be because the other branches, especially the Congress, failed to do their jobs.

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Venezuela and oil

Why did global markets hardly blink in the aftermath of the Trump invasion of Venezuela? Because, among other things, the importance of the oil reserves there are vastly overblown. Energy expert Bob Brecha explains it all in an insightful essay on the Tropic Press website. You can read it here:

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